Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus, a control method for the image forming apparatus, and a storage medium.
Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, there is known an image forming apparatus which carries out communication with a plurality of external apparatuses such as a mobile terminal, a client PC, and a DHCP server (see, for example, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 2013-205982). This image forming apparatus is connected to the mobile terminal by a wireless LAN and also connected to the client PC and the DHCP server by a wired LAN via a LAN cable. When carrying out wireless LAN communication with the mobile terminal, the image forming apparatus itself acts as an access point and automatically issues an IP address for use in wireless LAN communication with the mobile terminal. As a result, the image forming apparatus carries out wireless LAN communication with the mobile terminal using Wi-Fi Direct (registered trademark), Bluetooth (registered trademark), or the like. The image forming apparatus also carries out wired LAN communication with the client PC using an IP address issued by the DHCP server.
Each of IP addresses for use in communication between the image forming apparatus and the mobile terminal and communication between the image forming apparatus and the client PC is comprised of a network address and a host address.
However, a network address of an IP address for use in wireless LAN communication between the image forming apparatus and the mobile terminal and a network address of an IP address for use in wired LAN communication between the image forming apparatus and the client PC may conflict with each other. As a result, both wireless LAN communication between the image forming apparatus and the mobile terminal and wired LAN communication between the image forming apparatus and the client PC may be possible. In this case, for example, if a communication setting that gives higher priority to wireless LAN communication between the image forming apparatus and the mobile terminal than to wired LAN communication between the image forming apparatus and the client PC is made in advance, wireless LAN communication between the image forming apparatus and the mobile terminal is carried out. Thus, even when a user wishes transmission of data from the image forming apparatus to the client PC, the data is transmitted to the mobile terminal and hence cannot be transmitted to the client PC to which transmission of the data is wished by the user. Namely, when the image forming apparatus carries out LAN communications with a plurality of external apparatuses, a problem arises when a plurality of IP addresses for use in the respective LAN communications conflict with one another because it is impossible to properly carry out the LAN communications with the plurality of external apparatuses.